‘Everything in the rotunda was smashed into oblivion’

In the 1930s, the Soviet authorities blew up Odesa’s Transfiguration Cathedral. Now Russia has destroyed it again.

Russia’s attack on Odesa on the night of July 22 was the largest to hit the city’s historic center since the start of the full-scale war, according to local authorities. The regional administration initially reported that at least 44 buildings were damaged, 25 of which were officially recognized architectural monuments. Later, Ukraine’s Culture Ministry revised the number to 29 monuments, including some that belong to the Historic Center of Odesa World Heritage Site and its buffer zone. The city’s massive Transfiguration Cathedral sustained the most serious damage. Meduza tells the story of the historic church, which was demolished by the Soviet government, rebuilt in independent Ukraine, and destroyed once again by Russia’s invasion.

UNESCO added Odesa’s historic center to its list of World Heritage Sites on January 25, 2023 — just six months before the Russian military launched its largest attack on the city so far. The inscription process, which usually takes years, was expedited in light of the ongoing war. UNESCO “strongly condemned” last week’s attack and vowed to send a mission to the city to conduct a “preliminary assessment of damages.”

In its statement, the organization noted that Russia’s July 22–23 strikes on the city constituted an “act of hostility” and that they came just days after other Russian attacks on World Heritage Convention-protected territory. According to UNESCO, on July 20, Russian shelling damaged, among other things, three museums: the Archeological Museum, the Maritime Museum, and the Literature Museum. All of them are marked by the Blue Shield symbol, the emblem of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

The intentional destruction of cultural sites can constitute a war crime, according to the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2347, which was signed in 2017. Russia is a permanent member of the council.

Multiple Ukrainian organizations have tracked the destruction of religious sites during the war, including the Workshop for the Academic Study of Religion and the Institute for Religious Freedom. According to their data, nearly 500 religious structures, religious-educational institutes, and sanctuaries have been heavily damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Most of them have been Ukrainian Orthodox Church buildings.

The Russian Defense Ministry has acknowledged that it attacked the city but denies that the Transfiguration Cathedral, which was more heavily damaged than any other building, was a target. According to the ministry, it only targeted sites where Ukraine was preparing “terrorist attacks against Russia” and deliberately avoided striking civilian infrastructure. The cathedral, according to the Russian authorities, was damaged by the “incompetent actions of Ukrainian air-defense operators.” Since the start of the full-scale war, however, Russia has carried out numerous high-precision strikes on civilian infrastructure and has categorically denied doing so each time.

‘Practically destroyed’

The Transfiguration Cathedral is the largest religious structure in southern Ukraine and the biggest Orthodox church in Odesa. It belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. According to Odesa’s military administration, Russia’s July 23 attack “practically destroyed” the building.

Three people were inside the cathedral at the time of the attack, and all of them survived. A fire broke out after the strike, destroying the part of the building where icons and candles were sold to parishioners, according to archdeacon Andriy Palchuk, who has served in the church for more than 15 years. He came to the building immediately after the attack and took several videos of the aftermath.

In one of his clips, Palchuk says that the strike “hit the right side [of the church] and crashed through to the basement.” The video then shows the affected area: a side chapel that held an icon case containing the Kasperovska Icon of the Mother of God, Odesa’s patron saint. The icon was removed from the rubble the following morning. The protective glass had broken, and the icon’s setting was cracked, but the painting itself was still in one piece.

In addition to the icon, Palchuk said, other religious relics such as antimins and a communion cup were recovered from the rubble, as were pieces of mosaics that fell from the church’s walls.

According to Palchuk, the church’s altar was destroyed, and the structure’s foundation and much of the building itself were damaged. “Everything inside [the rotunda was crushed] into oblivion,” he wrote on Facebook.

The Italian government has offered to help restore the cathedral. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that her country, “whose restoration skills are unique in the world,” is prepared to commit to working on the Transfiguration Cathedral and other damaged sites in Ukraine.

The church’s predecessor

The Transfiguration Cathedral building that was hit by a Russian missile is a reproduction of an older structure that once stood on the same ground. The original cathedral was destroyed during the Stalin era after the authorities ruled that it didn’t hold “architectural value” and was rebuilt in the 2000s.

The cathedral’s history began at the same time as the founding of Odesa itself, in 1794. When the Metropolitan Gabriel consecrated the city, he also blessed the construction site of the future church, and the first stone was laid a year later. Like many Odesa buildings of that time, the building was designed by an Italian architect, Francesco Frapolli.

Construction was finished, and the church was consecrated in 1808. Local stone was used for the structure’s roof, while the floor was made of light marble. Then, in 1837, a bell tower designed by Frapolli’s brother, Giovanni Frapolli, was built a short distance away from the church. Together with the cross on top, the tower was 72 meters (236 feet) tall. Finally, nine years later, St. Petersburg architect Deolaus-Heinrich Heidenreich built the cathedral’s middle section, a refectory joining the church and the bell tower.

The cathedral’s last major reconstruction occurred in 1903. At that point, the building could hold up to 9,000 people and was considered one of the largest churches in the Russian Empire.

When the Bolsheviks came to power, they decided to close the cathedral and blow it up along with multiple other Orthodox churches in Odesa. The demolition process began in 1936, and according to the local newspaper The Black Sea Commune, it required 150 people. One eyewitness to the building’s destruction, the writer and historian Vladimir Gridin, said the building’s most valuable icons and marble, including from the gravestones, were removed from the building before its destruction. It’s unclear what happened to them after that.

There are conflicting accounts of how the structure was destroyed. According to Rudolf Tsiporkis, the director of the Odesa Local History Museum, explosives were put inside the bell tower so that it would fall on the church itself, destroying it. A photograph of the building, however, shows the bell tower and rear facade still standing while the roof over the prayer hall is destroyed.

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After the dissolution of the USSR, the Ukrainian authorities decided to rebuild the Transfiguration Cathedral as well as other Odesa churches destroyed during the Soviet era. Construction lasted from 2000 until 2005. The Odesa architect and architecture historian Valentin Pilyavsky noted that while the structure was rebuilt in the same place and to the same proportions as the original, the new church was “still just an ambitious outer shell illustrating the historic building.” “Aside from photographs and very few blueprints of the original building, there were no materials for meticulously replicating the exterior forms,” he explained.

Its possible inaccuracies notwithstanding, in 2007, the complex was declared a monument of local importance by Ukraine’s Culture and Tourism Ministry. In 2010, it was consecrated by Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Story by Asya Zolnikova

Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale